A case for worthy cause marketing

Instead of conventional advertising, worthy cause marketing aims to draw loyal following to promote favorite causes.

BUY a bottle or two of these wines and contribute to worthy causes.

How can wine and kindness be related? There’s one brand that goes beyond the usual promotion and is heavy into worthy cause marketing that pushes acts of kindness rather than the product itself.

Barefoot Wines hopes to make an important footprint in the country as it launched the Barefoot ARK or Acts of Random Kindness, a movement that promotes easy little deeds to make the world a better place.

Barefoot Wines, a specialty wine brand from California, is known for its distinctly fun personality, and pioneered worthy cause marketing by supporting people and causes such as the environment, education and community building.

“Instead of conventional advertising, worthy cause marketing aims to draw loyal following to promote favorite causes. The simple version of worthy cause marketing is to know charities as avenues for marketing,” says Von de Torres, managing director of International Wine and Food at Emperador Distillers Inc. during the recent launch of Barefoot ARK at the Gourmet Gypsy Art Café in Quezon City.

VON de Torres talked about worthy cause marketing and how it has impacted the global sales of Barefoot wines.

In this campaign, followers and volunteers are encouraged to do, post and share acts of random kindness at the Barefoot ARK page on Facebook and Instagram. In the monthly search for ARK of the Month, acts of random kindness posted on social media may be nominated to win prizes.

“So, step one is to look for ways to engage the community and make the world a better place through wine. Some causes we supported are fundraisers, causes of LGBT, charity walks and beach cleanups. Barefoot worthy cause marketing is a powerful legacy beyond the charity works. It showed wine companies and American businesses that you can really as the saying goes, do well by doing good,” De Torres emphasizes.

And the returns for this worthy cause marketing are plentiful as Barefoot is the best-selling brand worldwide with sales of over 20 million cases annually.

“Life is full of surprises. When we purchased this brand in 2005, we didn’t expect this kind of success. Now Barefoot has become the largest, most awarded global brand,” says Hyun Jun Cho, Sales director for Asia Pacific of E & J Gallo Winery about the brand that started in 1965 and was brought to greater prominence by entrepreneurs Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey as they renamed the brand Barefoot Cellars and created the footprint label known today.

Barefoot Wines is exclusively distributed by S&R Membership Shopping. To find out more about Barefoot Wines, like and follow Barefoot Wines Philippines/@barefootwinesph on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.